The article is written by Mir Khubaib and is part of the series called “Best Reads of 2018.” You can read more articles of this series here. Followed by more than 9000 people on Instagram, Mir loves to photograph & review books. We thank Mir for taking time & compiling the list for us.
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Hello guys. Hope you had a wonderful reading year. My year reading-wise was amazing because I read such quality books. So this task of selecting only 5 books was very difficult. I am not complaining though, as I loved this opportunity to dig deeper to understand why I like these books (and why I would I recommend them to everyone.)
The books are arranged in the chronology of my reading them in the year. Earlier reads come first.
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1. Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
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This quintessential African epic novel that traces the fate of many generations of two sisters who were separated early in life, the story encompasses time and space and yet never leaves the reader time to have a breather. To knit a story so vast in scope is a marvel in itself. For a debut author on such a herculean task, she didn’t fall in any pitfalls along her journey. By the end of every chapter, a story of a different person, you will be left with a thirst to know more.
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2. Palestine by Joe Sacco
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What sets apart Palestine from most of the graphic novels is that it’s a “graphic memoir” of author’s visit to Palestine and Israel. This work of non-fiction feels like a work of fiction, it is that sensational a life for Palestinians to live. For those who read the stories of Nazis and Holocaust and wonder why people remained silent, should see the chillingly brutal images of this novel and the horrors of our present times.
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3. Half the Night is Gone by Amitabha Bagchi
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This fiction-in-fiction style of writing excited me to go back and forth and made me feel that the protagonist (who’s also an author) is literally writing the novel himself. Bagchi’s protagonist is an author in the autumn of his life, is disappointed to be categorized as a satirist and a major failure as a brother, husband and father, broken by his son’s suicide and his wife’s aloofness. He is writing a novel that takes a lot from his personal life and events. He tells a story of a feudal family in the early days of independence. It is so difficult to write a review of such a masterpiece without running into many pages. So, I’d just ask you to pick it up if you haven’t yet and enjoy a fresh style of an Indian author.
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4. Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
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This book was out of my comfort zone, a contemporary/YA novel, but I breezed through it. It is a story that will leave you a better person at heart by the end. It does it without being preachy or the reader even knowing that he’s being transformed. So subtly it does it. Eleanor had a difficult past and she is living her life a social recluse, in a shell of weekly routine religiously followed, all the while reassuring herself that everything is completely fine. It is an important book on mental health and that there’s always more to people than catch the eye on first sight and beyond our personal biases and instant judgements we make, mostly subconsciously. And lastly, that small acts of kindness go a long way to change the lives we daily touch.
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5. Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa
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I am currently reading this book. And like me, if you’re also a fan of Khaled Hosseini and bemoan that there aren’t enough books by him to satiate your hunger, here is Susan Abulhawa. Her ink has the same melancholy, pain and hope. Her prose is as poetic and heartbreaking. Mornings in Jenin is a story of Palestine from the gaze of an insider that has started to see clearly in an all encompassing darkness and through the continuous blur of tears.
